Fallout 3Review

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A bleak, twisted, yet utterly wonderful game.

By Erik Brudvig

Fallout 3 is a special videogame. It's an open-world role-playing game that delivers an experience unlike anything on the market right now. It's a gripping and expansive showcase of how much depth and excitement can be packed into one videogame, and it does justice to the Fallout franchise. This sequel is the first made by Bethesda, the developers responsible for The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. You don't need to play any of their past games or any previous Fallout games to enjoy this one. It stands on its own as a memorable and well-crafted videogame.

The Fallout universe paints a picture of a dystopian future. It exists in what people on the cusp of the atomic revolution in the 1950s saw as the sci-fi world of tomorrow…if several thousand nuclear bombs were dropped on it. It's a quaint sci-fi view of a future filled with atomic cars, robot servants, and incredibly basic computer terminals. A nuclear war has taken away most of these technological comforts, providing the backdrop for a game with a dreary, desperate atmosphere filled with glib and dark humor. It's a world that is both fantastic and somehow believable. And it is one that's exciting to explore.

You play as the Vault Dweller, a blank slate for you to write your story on. The game begins with your birth and then quickly moves through childhood with snapshots of pivotal events, such as the day you get your Pip-Boy 3000. It's a cleverly veiled character creation and tutorial sequence that sets the backdrop of the story. You live in Vault 101, a bunker designed to keep its occupants alive through the nuclear war that ravaged the surface. However, this vault didn't reopen when the war finished and as the opening cinematic informs you, it is here you will die because nobody ever enters or leaves Vault 101.

But that wouldn't make for a very interesting game. At the end of your childhood, you awake to alarms and confusion. Your father has opened the vault entrance and taken flight. The fragile existence of the other vault inhabitants has been shattered. Nothing will ever be the same, especially for you since it is your charge to leave the relative comfort of Vault 101 and search for your father out in the wastes.

The atmosphere and attention to detail are top notch.

When the vault door rolls back and you step into the sun for the first time, the sense of awe and wonder as you gaze across the wasteland that was once the United States' capital is palpable. Life is absent where it isn't hanging on by a thread. Few buildings remain standing, most reduced to piles of rubble. In the distance, you can see what was downtown Washington D.C., a standing but wrecked Washington Monument dominates the skyline as the tallest remaining structure. You can already tell this game is going to be extraordinary.

And then your thoughts turn to survival, just as they have for every other human; for every feral dog; for everything.